


Shared Space

by yikesola



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2017, Dan Howell's Rebranding, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 22:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16819903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yikesola/pseuds/yikesola
Summary: Dan didn’t use to think his bedroom, and everything in it was like… peak ugly. It’s just that nowadays, when he looks around, Jesus Christ it’s all really ugly.A fic about Dan longing for change and wanting his surroundings to reflect that change.





	Shared Space

Dan didn’t use to think his bedroom, and everything in it was like… peak ugly. 

When he first bought the checkered black, white, and grey duvet he’d thought it was perfect— the same as Phil’s bright blue and green yet diluted entirely of colour. Seemed to fit him well enough. When he first bought the low black bedframe he thought it was a good step into his own branding following the bedframe he’d had back in their Manchester apartment. 

When he filled the room with all the little bobs and bibs, he just felt like each one was adding to the aesthetic he’d ascribed to himself. It all seemed to fit. If it was ugly, well, he’d meant it to be. 

It’s just that nowadays, when he looks around, Jesus Christ it’s all really ugly. He hates that he has to film in front of it. He hates that its one of two options for him and Phil to fall asleep in every night— and hell as ugly as Dan finds his own bedroom the unwavering Amazingphil aesthetic is not far behind. 

It just feels inauthentic as hell. It feels like it belongs back in the days of his straightened hair and refusal to see a therapist. On the best of days. 

On the worst of days, it feels like it belongs back with his truly awful square hair and ‘fyi i like vagina’ tweets. 

His room looked more or less the same through all those changes, and even if he’s still changing now— every day, every fucking minute it seems sometimes— he feels like sitting in the same room through all of it has left him in some weird stagnant plateau. Like the room has decided he can only grow and change and improve so much, by its own arbitrary confines. 

He hates that it’s his film set. He hates that it’s his room. He doesn’t want his own fucking room, and he doesn’t want Phil to have a room of his own either. It’s superfluous. If they need to step outside of one another’s bubble for a few hours there’s plenty of options that don’t involve separate goddamn bedrooms— the gaming room, the kitchen, taking a long bath, taking a long walk. 

Hell, Phil goes up north to see his family often enough that they get all the separation they could want. They’re desperate for close quarters once he gets back each time. 

He’s tired of saying, “Let’s sleep in mine tonight.” He wants it to be understood they’re sleeping in their bedroom, the main bedroom, the bedroom they share. And they don’t currently have that. It’s another arena where Dan feels they’re stagnant and plateauing. 

He wants a room decorated to reflect who he is these days. A room that reflects who he and Phil are these days, because he wants it to be their room. 

And he doesn’t want it to be the danisnotonfire set anymore. 

He wants it to belong to him and Phil, and only to him and Phil. He’s long ago resigned himself to the internet’s prying eyes— he invited them in, after all. He knows what and when to share things now, or at least he’s learning. The goal posts keep moving. He finds he’s comfortable sharing more than he once thought he would be. 

But he’s tired of sharing his literal bed with them. 

He wants to leave it unmade on filming days if he feels like it. He wants Phil’s things not to be shamefully banished from view. He wants a room that he doesn’t look at with the singular adjective rolling through his head like a drumbeat: “ugly, ugly, ugly.”

He says it a couple of times in liveshows, “It’s just so ugly, y’know?” and the chat says things about how iconic his setup is and how it’s all on brand (they don’t say it so calmly, of course. They screech it in all caps “OMG NO I LOVE UR ROOM!!!!!! PLZ DONT CHANGE IT” and he can’t really tell how serious they’re being, or how much any of it matters). 

He says it to Phil while pulling his sheets from the dryer one day, “God, they’re so fucking ugly…” and Phil laughs that not everyone can have his own impeccable taste. 

He says it to his therapist, “I just hate looking at such an ugly space every fucking day. Looking at all my ugly furniture and knickknacks and pillowcases.” The office is a little warmer than he’d like it because of the changing seasons, but he doesn’t say anything about that. His therapist asks him what he means by ‘ugly’ and all he can do is repeat that word because once he found it fit he can’t think of anything better. 

“I dunno… it’s just ugly,” he says. “It’s all stuff I’ve seen on my worst days and I guess I’m just sick of seeing it.” 

His therapist tells him that makes perfect sense, and they have the kind of smile that they give Dan whenever he says something they’ve been waiting for him to figure out. Or something he’s almost figured out. 

It hits him after the thousandth time he sees himself credited in a proper professional news article as “Daniel Howell (danisnotonfire)” that it isn’t just the fucking bedroom that’s ugly. Because that parenthetical is the ugliest thing he’s ever seen in his life— none of the other YouTubers beside him in the piece are shackled by a username their ugly teenaged brains drummed up in the early aughts. 

His bedroom is tied up with all his branding, his ugly llama/placenta/randomXD branding that built him from when he was nothing but a fanboy without a single video on his channel to what he is today. With a tour and a book under his belt, with millions of subscribers and enough internet clout it makes him blush. With a life partner he no longer feels the need to keep at arms’ length and a bit of residual shame that he’d ever felt the need to do so. 

So he has to be grateful for it, right? For the branding that got him here. Ugly though it is? 

Well, he can be grateful for it, he figures. He can be grateful and hate it. And, fuck, he can throw it all out if he wants to. Because it’s ugly. And it isn’t who he is anymore. 

“Hey babe,” he says one day from his sofa crease. Phil has just walked in from the kitchen with his afternoon coffee and he looks up at Dan’s words. “Remember before the tour how I was itching to rebrand?” 

Phil nods, his smile waiting in his cheeks in a way that makes Dan’s heart thump because he recognises it. Every once in a while Dan will realise just how many of Phil’s quirks he recognises and his heart thumps in a way quite distinct from anxious heart palpitations. “I remember,” he says. 

“And how we figured it wasn’t a great idea since the tour was pretty much centred on our branding?” Dan continues. 

“Mm-hmm,” Phil nods again. He’s still standing like he’s waiting patiently for Dan to stop waffling. 

“Well…” Dan shrugs, “tour’s been over a few months now...” 

“Sure has.” 

Dan sets aside his laptop and stands to straighten his spine. Phil’s smile has stopped hiding now; it’s creasing his eyes. His glasses fog when he takes a sip of his coffee. 

“Something to think about,” Dan says. He’s trying to hide his own smile, but he can feel the godforsaken dent in his cheek nonetheless. 

Phil laughs then, a gentle Phil sort of laugh and one Dan understands entirely. Phil knows Dan wouldn’t have brought it up at all if he hadn’t already been thinking about it for ages; if the thinking hadn’t already been done and the decision already been made. Because Dan may agonise over decisions for ages and ages, turning them over in his brain until by trying to decipher their meaning he’s stripped them of any that they had to begin with. But once he lands somewhere, once he’s made a choice— well, he’s good. 

Phil steps a little closer and plants a kiss on Dan’s forehead. It’s a soft, gentle sort of kiss. A kiss that requires no comment. 

Dan reaches for his mug that sits on the table beside them. He swigs the last sip of cooled tea back and moves towards the kitchen. 

“I would’ve gotten you one,” Phil says. “I didn’t know you were out.” 

“Better dote on me more consistently, Lester,” Dan laughs, almost at the door now. “I’m never gonna marry you at this rate.” One of their throw pillows hits the wall by his head because Phil’s aim has never been exact, and their laughter echoes off the cracked white walls of the flat they’ve long since outgrown. 

Later they’re looking at apartment listings they’ve each tabbed for the other to pour over together.

“Main bedroom’s got an en-suite,” Dan says about a listing that looks promising even if the walls are curved and the layout is impossible to fully wrap their heads around. The internet’s supposed to be better than their current flat, according to the info provided. That alone caught their eye. 

Phil nods. “We gonna have a filmed round of rock paper scissors for who gets it?” 

He’s laughing. Dan isn’t. 

Dan clicks a few photos over to look at a tile-floored office that’s so small it might as well be a glorified closet. “That can’t be the gaming room!” Phil says. “Look at it, imagine your voice bouncing off those walls when you get screaming— a room that small? Our heads would explode!” 

“Maybe,” Dan does laugh then. “Not a good gaming room, no.” 

“Guess it could be storage?” 

“That’s one of the reasons for moving, ain’t it?” 

Phil nods. “A big one, yeah.” 

Dan sits up a little straighter when he says the bit he’s surprisingly nervous to say. “Could be the Amazingphil room…?” 

“Right, babe,” Phil laughs and rolls his eyes, “Giving me that tiny tiny room while you get the en-suite and the room big enough for four king-sized beds lined up in a row!” 

“I didn’t say it’d be _your_ room.” Dan’s looking at a suddenly fascinating patch of carpet and refusing to look anywhere else. “I said it could be the Amazingphil room.” 

Phil’s stopped laughing then. He hasn’t noticed how interesting the carpet is; Dan can feel his eyes on him, boring through the side of his skull. “Oh,” he says. “Guess it could.” 

“The main bedroom wouldn’t need four king beds though, you glutton,” Dan says. “Just one.” He turns to Phil then. “Just one for the two of us. Should be enough, right?” 

Dan had been too nervous to expect the smile he’s met with. 

Years ago, lifetimes ago it sometimes feels like, when Dan was dropping out of uni and moving from the halls, he had insisted that they get a new flat in Manchester. That the one Phil had been living in and Dan near constantly visiting wouldn’t do at all. 

Because it had one bedroom. And because their audience knew full well that it had one bedroom. Because it didn’t matter if they slept in the same bed in whatever new flat they wound up in, he just needed the audience to see two beds, two duvets, two doors that shut presumably between the two of them each night. 

Phil hadn’t complained, at the time. Dan remembers the crease in his brow, but still, he never complained out loud. 

And even later, when they moved from Manchester to London, it wasn’t even a conversation they’d had to have. Two bedrooms. 

Two ugly bedrooms filled with all the things Dan looks at now and repeats and repeats, it’s all so fucking ugly… 

“Should be,” Phil nods. He clicks the right arrow through a few more pictures. “I’ve really missed having a balcony,” he says when he comes to a photo of one that dwarfs their balcony back in Manchester. 

The knot in Dan’s stomach begins to untangle. 

He leans into the curve of Phil’s body, pulls one of Phil’s arms around him, let’s his scent surround him and breathes it in deep. 

He clicks back to the photos of the main bedroom and has a vision of white-sheeted minimalism. No more ugly clutter. Maybe one or two statement pieces— things that are for him and for Phil and who they are today. Who they’ll be in this new place. This pitstop before permanence, this ledge they’re going to rest on before they continue their ascent up to whatever heights they're aiming for. 

And it won’t be a fucking set. It won’t be the backdrop for the videos he shares with the entire world. He’ll find somewhere else to film them. 

He knows Phil likes the setup he has now; he likes the consistency of having filmed before it for damn near a decade. And that’s what the suggestion of a tucked away room that’ll hold a bed and the checkered blue and green duvet and very little else is rooted in. Phil can film there, then afterwards crawl into his actual bed with Dan each night. In the room away from their cameras, the room they share. 

It’ll be his and Phil’s, and only his and Phil’s. And it won’t be a bit ugly. It’ll be fucking beautiful. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading-- come say hi on [tumblr](http://yikesola.tumblr.com/post/180732126344/shared-space) !


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